The invention relates to a method of using a web-browser to pass information from a first web-entity to one of a plurality of second web-entities.
One problem with existing communications networks is that they are complex and have a disjointed architecture. For example, there is a lack of converged network management functions, and security schemas are often incomplete, inconsistent and/or redundant. It is therefore desired to produce a high performance network architecture which gives convergence, is highly scalable and which enables network rather than nodal services to be provided.
The term “web-entity” is used to refer to any apparatus, device or communications node which is accessible using a web-browser and which is connected to or in communication with a web-based communications network. For example, the web-entity may be a web-based information system, or a telephone terminal connected to the internet.
The term “web-based information system”, is used to refer to a web site, web pages, or web-based application which enables a user to access stored information. For example, the web-based information system can be a list of telephone numbers on a web page or can be a sophisticated web-based interface to a database. Web-based information systems such as telephone directories, television programme schedules, movie guide databases, weather information databases and the like are well known. However, when a user obtains information from such a web-based information system this is usually being obtained for a task which then needs to be completed by the user. Often this task involves sending the information onto another device. For example, in the case that the web-based information system is a telephone directory, the task is typically to obtain a person's telephone number and then to make a call to that person. In the case that the web-based information system is a television programme schedule, the task could be to obtain the broadcast time details for a particular show and to then enter these details into a video recorder in order to make a video recording of the show.
It is desired to simplify these tasks and automate them as far as possible. For example, instead of a user obtaining a telephone number from a web-based directory, and then manually dialing the number, it is required to automate this process. This can be thought of as a “click to dial” service, where a user selects a telephone number from the directory and then clicks a button in order to send that number directly to a telephone, or other suitable communications network node, for dialing. It is particularly difficult to automate this type of process where there are many available telephones and telephone systems (for example) and it is necessary to send a telephone number to a specific one of these from one of several web-based information systems. More generally, it is required to enable a web-based information system to forward information to another device which is connected to the web, such as a video recorder or a private branch exchange (PBX), under the control of a web-browser. Previously, this has been addressed by providing advance details of the device to the web-based information system. For example, in order for the web-based information system to send information to a video recorder that is connected to the web, the web-based information system needs to know the location or address (more specifically a web address) of the video recorder. However, if it is required to provide a web-based service whereby users access a television programme schedule and send details to their video recorder, it is not practical for the web-based service to know details of all potential user's video recorders. The present invention seeks to address this problem by providing a method whereby a web-based information system is able to send information to a device without having prior knowledge about that device.
Three methods which involve the web-based information system having knowledge of the information receiver (e.g. video recorder, private branch exchange) are now described with reference to FIGS. 1 to 2.
The first method is described with reference to FIG. 1. FIG. 1 shows a client computer 10 which is in communication with a web-based information system 14 (or any other suitable web-entity) via the internet 12. The user of the client computer 10 has access to one telephone terminal 5. One or more other telephone terminals 20 are present for use by other client computers which are not shown. The user's telephone terminal 5 is associated with the client computer 10 and the web server 15 using a registration process i.e. the user must first register his telephone terminal 5 and his client computer with the web server 15. The user's telephone terminal 5 is connected to a private branch exchange (PBX) 18 and from there to a public switched telephone network 19. The PBX 18 is also connected to a web server 15 for example, using a CTI link. The web server 15 is connected to the internet 12. Consider the case where the web-based information system 14 is a telephone directory. Associated with each entry in the telephone directory is a (universal resource locator) URL for the web server 15 that is connected to the user's PBX 18. When the user of the client PC 10 accesses the web-based information service 14 and downloads for example a web page or another type of document with web links or an applet, he or she is able to select an entry in the web page telephone directory and cause the listed telephone number to be sent to the web server 15 as part of a corresponding URL and thus to the user's PBX 18. This enables the PBX to make the telephone call from the user's telephone terminal 5 to the selected telephone number. However, this approach has several drawbacks. For example, the URL of the web server 15 which is connected to the user's PBX 18 must be known by the web-based information service. Also, when other user's of a different PBX are considered the system is not really practical. For example, consider the user of a second client computer 11 whose telephone is connected to a different PBX 17 via a different web server 16. Because the web-based information service is arranged to forward telephone numbers to the other web server 15 it is not possible for a user of client pc 11 to select a telephone number and automatically initiate a call from his or her own telephone. In order to allow that to happen, several versions of the web-based information service would need to be provided, one for each PBX. This would be expensive and take up larger amounts of storage space. In addition, each user would need to know how to access the appropriate version of the web-based information service. A major drawback of this arrangement is thus that the web-based information service has knowledge about the web servers 15, 16 which are connected to PBXs 18, 17.
A second method can also be considered with respect to FIG. 1. Here the web-based information service maintains a database containing information about registered users and an associated PBX (or video recorder or other device) for each user. This avoids the need for several versions of the web-based information service to be provided, but still requires that the web-based information service has knowledge of the PBX, video recorder, or other information receiving device, for each user. In order to obtain this knowledge, each user is required to complete a registration process in which the information about the location of the information receiving device is provided to each web-based information service which they wish to use. However, this is time consuming for the user. Also, the web-based information service is required to maintain a complex database of the registration information and dynamically generate the appropriate web pages/information depending on which user is connected to the system. All of this is computationally expensive and very complex to implement, set up and maintain.
A third method is now considered with respect to FIG. 2. Nortel Networks' own Internet Voice Button product enables customers who visit a business web site to click a button on a web page in order to call the business, for example, to place an Hi order, request a service or ask for more information. As illustrated in FIG. 2, a customer computer 25 is connected to the internet 29. A business computer 26 is also connected to the internet 29. Telephone terminals 27, 28 are connected to each other via a public switched telephone network (PSTN) 30. A business web site is provided using a web server 32 connected to the internet 29 and a voice button server 31 is also provided connected to both the internet 29 and the PSTN 30. When a customer clicks on a voice button on a web page of the web site, information is sent to the voice button server 31. This information includes the business telephone number to be called as well as customer preference information. The customer preference information is entered by the user in a registration type process when the customer uses voice button for the first time. The customer preference information includes the telephone number of the customer's telephone set or telephone terminal 27. The voice button server 31 then initiates a call to the customer terminal 27. when the customer answers this call, the voice button server 31 initiates a second call to the business terminal 28. The two calls may also be initiated the other way around or simultaneously. The web site provided on the web server 32 may be a web-based information service such as a telephone directory. However, such a web-based information service has the same limitations as for the first method described above since the web-based information (on the web server 32) must point at (i.e. connect to and therefore know about) the voice button server 31. Therefore provisioning of multiple web-based information services (e.g. directories) and multiple voice button servers independently of each other is not possible and at best requires very complex implementations (somewhat akin to method two described above). Another drawback of this approach is that the call to the business telephone 28 is made from the voice button server 31 rather than the customer telephone 27. This means that the business has no information about the customer telephone 27 which requested the call. Because the method effectively involves joining or conferencing together the customer's telephone 27 and the business telephone 28 this call actually involves making two calls and has an inefficient loop through the voice button server 31 as compared with making a direct call from the customer to the business. This is often referred to as a “tromboning effect”.
A fourth method is now described, with reference to FIG. 1b. In this case, a web-browser provided on a client computer 10 is set up with a special “plug in”/or in-built capability which enables the web-browser to recognise and support a special URL tag. Consider the situation where a web-based information service 14 provides a telephone directory. When a user selects an entry from the telephone directory, the corresponding telephone number is sent from the telephone directory web page to the user's computer 10 using the special URL tag. This URL tag is recognised by the specially configured web-browser at the client computer as containing a telephone number to be passed to a telephone (previously associated with the client computer using a standard CTI link or software telephone connection 30) for calling. The main drawback with this method is that each user's web-browser needs to be specially configured to recognise and support the particular URL tags. Microsoft (trade mark) have introduced the proprietary URL tag CALLTO which automatically initiates a call using the telephone number which follows the URL tag. Microsoft's NetMeeting (trade mark) software is used to do this. The user's web-browser needs to be equipped with a helper application to pick-up the special URL tag and pass it to the appropriate application or device using a suitable protocol or interface. For example, CALLTO passes the information (phone number) to Microsoft NetMeeting (trade mark) which then places the call. Thus in this fourth method the web-based information service does not require information about the user's telephone. However, each user must use a special web-browser as described above and needs either a helper software telephone application (like Netmeeting (trade mark) or a standard CTI link 30. Thus it can be seen that even if the market reaches the stage where the required URL tag and the special browser capability becomes standard and widely available this approach doe not resolve to requirement to have a fully thin-client (i.e. a web browser only) solution.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide a method of using a web-browser to pass information from a first web-entity to one of a plurality of second web-entities which overcomes or at least mitigates one or more of the problems noted above.
Further benefits and advantages of the invention will become apparent from a consideration of the following detailed description given with reference to the accompanying drawings, which specify and show preferred embodiments of the invention.